Liberal newspapers to the History Channel: Don't make Texas look heroic. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Britain's Guardian newspaper and others are all trashing a new miniseries on the Lone Star State. The Post lamented the fact that the five episodes fail to portray the "Alamo and the Texas Revolution [as] a land grab by white slaveowners."
The Guardian complained that Texas Rising is "American history as reimagined by the Tea Party." Writer Brian Moylan huffed that the program is "almost sure to be a hit as it falls right within History Channel’s red-state wheelhouse." He suggested that the show will appeal "directly to the libertarian and conservative sensibilities of the macho-man demographic that tunes into the channel."
Moylan added:
There is not an inkling of post-colonial reflection about what that means in the great scope of history. The line between good guys and bad guys is drawn as simply and thoughtlessly as it is in a backyard game of Cowboys and Indians. Essentially this movie is about a band of militiamen doing what they think is best for the country and kicking a bunch of Mexicans out of Texas, something that is still happening today.
In the New York Times, Neil Genzlinger described a "taint hanging over the whole series":
Native American warriors gallop and whoop; Mexican soldiers and generals enjoy cockfights, executions and all things vile. The series looks and sounds like a western from the 1940s, and that’s not a compliment. The good guys — the Texians — are good, and the bad guys are reductive figures who exist to be hated.
The San Francisco Chronicle opined that "there’s little effort to portray the Mexicans and Native Americans as anything except cartoon villains and savages."
The Boston Globe's Matthew Gilbert lectured, "I know the miniseries is set in the 1830s, but aren’t we at the point now, in the 2010s, when we no longer want to see history reduced to offensive stereotypes and simplistic good versus bad morality?"
